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28 October 2015 / Roger Smith
Issue: 7674 / Categories: Opinion
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Back to the future

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Roger Smith embarks on some legal time-travel

In the month that includes “Back to the Future Day”, October 21, we should look at how legal practice is developing. We might remind ourselves that, whatever lawyers—particularly legal aid practitioners—were saying in October 1985, actually they had never had it so good. The duty solicitor scheme was about to be expanded: expenditure was on the up and set for a record climb through the next decade. The future is going to be so different.

Legal aid: here

Conferences in Birmingham (organised by the Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG)) and Belfast (the Public Interest Litigation Support project) discussed the future for legal aid practitioners. Both were pretty bleak. In particular, the LAPG delegates knew they were under the cosh. The good news was that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) had sent representatives for the first time: the bad news is what they said when they came. In truth, the Legal Aid Agency’s Hugh Barrett and Caroline Crowther had little option but to mouth their masters’ line that

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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Sponsored by
Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Chair of the Association of Pension Lawyers joins as partner

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Group names Shakespeare Martineau partner head of Sheffield office

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Four legal directors promoted to partner across UK offices

NEWS
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NLJ this week: Renters’ Rights revolution begins—brace for tribunal chaos

The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC

NLJ this week: Civil procedure gets a spring overhaul
Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
NLJ this week: Why GP complaints are going nowhere
Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
NLJ this week: Prenups meet a jurisdictional brick wall
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
NLJ this week: Has Rylands v Fletcher come back from the dead?
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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